--If you don't like this city fellow, Clarence, why do you come
here? why didn't you stop with your elder brother at Kicklebury?

K.--Why didn't I? Why didn't YOU stop at Kicklebury, mamma? Because you
had notice to quit. Serious daughter-in-law, quarrels about management
of the house--row in the building. My brother interferes, and politely
requests mamma to shorten her visit. So it is with your other two
daughters; so it was with Arabella when she was alive. What shindies you
used to have with her, Lady Kicklebury! Heh! I had a row with my brother
and sister about a confounded little nursery-maid.

LADY K.--Clarence!

K.--And so I had notice to quit too. And I'm in very good quarters here,
and I intend to stay in 'em, mamma. I say--

LADY K.--What do you say?

K.--Since I sold out, you know, and the regiment went abroad, confound
me, the brutes at the "Rag" will hardly speak to me! I was so ill, I
couldn't go. Who the doose can live the life I've led and keep health
enough for that infernal Crimea? Besides, how could I help it? I was
so cursedly in debt that I was OBLIGED to have the money, you know. YOU
hadn't got any.

LADY K.--Not a halfpenny, my darling. I am dreadfully in debt myself.

K.--I know you are. So am I. My brother wouldn't give me any, not a
dump. Hang him! Said he had his children to look to. Milliken wouldn't
advance me any more--said I did him in that horse transaction. He! he!
he! so I did! What had I to do but to sell out? And the fellows cut
me, by Jove. Ain't it too bad? I'll take my name off the "Rag," I will,
though.

LADY K.--We must sow our wild oats, and we must sober down; and we must
live here, where the living is very good and very cheap, Clarence, you
naughty boy! And we must get you a rich wife. Did you see at church
yesterday that young woman in light green, with rather red hair and a
pink bonnet?

K.--I was asleep, ma'am, most of the time, or I was bookin' up the
odds for the Chester Cup. When I'm bookin' up, I think of nothin' else,
ma'am,--nothin'.

LADY K.--That was Miss Brocksopp--Briggs, Brown and Brocksopp, the great
sugar-bakers. They say she will have eighty thousand pound. We will ask
her to dinner here.

K.--I say--why the doose do you have such old women to dinner here? Why
don't you get some pretty girls? Such a set of confounded old frumps as
eat Milliken's mutton I never saw. There's you, and his old mother Mrs.
Bonnington, and old Mrs. Fogram, and old Mis